$475,000 Ebay Listing

I hear you loud and clear and acknowledge that most of you know quite a bit more about general collecting than I do. My comment was based on the assumption that this statement from the lot description is true:

Quote:
So a mere 750 photos are a small sample of the quantity and significance of material involved. You will see key issues, top of set values, rarities and powerful rare and scarce singles and sets up to $1,000's of dollars each in value...

The quality throughout is of the highest possible order throughout. There may be some expected faults to be expected on a couple of the used issues. Much of the mint assets contained in the collection spans decades of standing orders, right up to the most elusive contemporary and much sought after contemporary period.

If this is true, there is a lot of material worth more than a few cents. New issues from the past 50-55 years if MNH are worth at least 45% or more of catalog, so buyers would be delighted to pay 30% for lots with a long, strong run of material acquired as new issues.

Those were my assumptions, but they may be quite full of manure!

First of all, they are all hinged, not NH.

Second, what % of catalog stamps of the last 50-55 years are "worth" depends on what country we are talking about. The vast majority of stamps from the US and Canada for instance are discount postage. Germany even worse. Some other countries will be better and others in between.

Second, to whom would they be worth at least 45% of cat if they were NH? No collector is going to buy this lot. It will eventually go to a dealer, but NO dealer would be delighted to pay 30% of cat for the entire thing IF it were NH. A few better countries individually, maybe, whole thing not even close.

The seller is clueless. The first 14 photos are all of the whole set of albums on the shelves from every angle imaginable. One photo would be enought to show the size of the collection. They even show a photo of the top of an album, as if that serves any purpose. It is not until photo 37 that the first stamp is shown.

Yes, some good PRC is shown, but, are the early PRC stamps originals or reprints? Is the monkey real or fake (there are a lot of fakes out there and some are dangerous).

As someone else said, this ebay listing is nothing more than a cheap ad for the collection to try to entice a potential buyer to come view it in person as no sane person would buy it for the asking price based on just the photos and the claimed catalog value. And if someone does buy it after viewing it in person, what are the chances the sale takes place through ebay, rather than off ebay where the seller won't have to pay the eBay/PayPal fees?

Shermae

I think most catalogues actually take UMM as the default for modern stamps. For example, my Yvert French catalogue ONLY values UMM stamps for post-1960 issues. I think SG's cut-off may be earlier (c1945 from memory).

Geoff

Eyeon, I should have excerpted my previous post. In my previous post in this thread I stated that if the lot were secured for 10-12% of catalog the eventual buyer would have good margins selling sections at 30%.

You'd have to sell it by individual stamps and sets to realize 30% CV or more, and then only on the better items. Selling any kind of collection or agglomeration of stamps is going to knock that back down to 10% or less. Most collectors won't bid more than that for budgetary reasons and/or the lot would contain a bunch of stamps they already have or don't want. Dealers wouldn't bid more than that because they need to apply a markup and still be competitive. Successful long-time dealers know the market and their clientele pretty well. If they looked at this and saw a money making opportunity at this price, it probably would have been sold already. I really don't know the true market value of a collection like this sold in its entirety, but I trust the judgement of others here who have thrown out much smaller numbers.

The (1) amount of labor it would take ,and (2) the length of time it would take, to get 30% of Scott out of this collection, if it can be done at all (which I doubt), would be immense.

Perhaps a show dealer that sells at 50-80% of Scott could get that return overall by cherrypicking the cream and selling the rest off as lots, but if relying on online/eBay sales, it's very doubtful. Online, 30-50% is what you would get for sound better material, and 10-20% is what you get for lots. Clearing 30% is virtually impossible.

I wonder what other offers the consignor received before handing it to NobleSpirit? Maybe My$+!c's low-ball offer will start to look good if it doesn't sell at the current price.

The best that collection can do is around $100,000 , There are only a few dealers who would mess around with that kind of inventory { my quess is it is made up of a few collections added together and then someone purchase new issues . Then when the party wanted to sell it ,he was told to add a few extra items that I would call eye candy to a stamp buyer .
The people who would handle this collection would be Rasdale, Applebaum ,Keller , H.R.Harmers and maybe Regency but once they find out there are only a few dozen $1,000 items that they can auction as seperate lots .Then some of them will be only interested in a cosignment and not a out right purchase .
On a lot like this with the mass of volumes and bulk there are only a few players in the game .